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"And at times, from the moaning and yelping blackness of the sea, there came a sound thin-drawn as from millions of miles away, distinct as though uttered in the ear like a whisper of confidence and I knew that a drowning man was calling on his God as he thrashed and was battered into silence, and that a blue-lipped woman was calling on her man as her hair whipped round her brows and she whirled about like a top.
He had to lift her off and help her to the tree where Bo leaned. Dale had ripped off a saddle and was spreading saddle-blankets on the ground under the pine. "Nell you swore you loved me!" was Bo's mournful greeting. The girl was pale, drawn, blue-lipped, and she could not stand up. "Bo, I never did or I'd never have brought you to this wretch that I am!" cried Helen. "Oh, what a horrible ride!"
Several ghastly, blue-lipped survivors in their clinging garments were wandering aimlessly along the shore, the veriest pictures of utter misery, as they mumbled a few words to each other, or stared absently around. They seemed to be partially bereft of their senses, and were probably somewhat dazed from the fearful scenes through which they had so recently passed.
With a rush we got to the poisoned men and dragged them out into the well-lit hall. Both of them were blue-lipped and insensible, with swollen, congested faces and protruding eyes.
The trembling young Slav at the blacksmith-shop, the blue-lipped boy in the office, and sorely wounded old Shiner were out of the fight. But Cawker's mine-guards were native born, or Irish, and most of the reinforcements that came with Nolan and himself were Americans, and all were good men and true. By day they could see and shoot at any man or men who sought to approach them with hostile intent.
I made out an old woman, an old wreck of womanhood, a scant-haired, blue-lipped ruin of what had once been woman. I heard her snivel and sniff and wheeze her "Lord ha' mercy" as she went by, slippering forward on her miserable feet, hugging to her wasted sides what remnant of gown she had, fawning before the boy, within the sphere of light that came from him.
We both reached the horse almost at the same time, and I fully expected him to draw on me at once; but stopping, he said: "You seem to forget, brother, that the edict applies to Fontainebleau as well as the Louvre." "Not in the least; but one is allowed to kill vermin in the forest." He glanced at me in speechless, blue-lipped rage.
Whether an orphan child only, or with a father that could thus lightly send her adrift, I do not know now, nor do I care to ask, but I do recall distinctly that on a raw bleak day in early winter she was brought to us, from a wild country settlement, by a reputed uncle a gaunt round- shouldered man, with deep eyes and sallow cheeks and weedy-looking beard, as we curiously watched him from the front window stolidly swinging this little, blue-lipped, red-nosed waif over the muddy wagon-wheel to father's arms, like so much country produce.
Thinking were they no thought of hunger and pinching cold; Of the blue-lipped, skinny children, the thin-chested, coughing men, The dry-breasted mothers, the dirt, disease and ignorance, The mangled workmen, the tramps, drunkards, pickpockets, prostitutes, thieves, The mad-houses, jails, asylums and hospitals, the sores, the blood of war, And all the other wondrous blessings that attend our civilization That civilization through which the wines and foods were given them.
This white, blue-lipped woman was not the Beatriz Weatherbee he had known; who had climbed the slope with him that morning, all exhilaration, spirit, charm; whose example had challenged his endurance and held his courage to the sticking point. "Why don't you say something?" he complained. "Have you turned into ice? Now look where you step, can't you?
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